“So he huffed, and he puffed, and he huffed and he puffed,and at last he blew the house in. And he ate up the second little pig.”(Click to enlarge)

This morning over at Kirkus, I’ll have a Q & A with author Candace Fleming about her acclaimed new biography for children and teens, Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart. This is one of the best books I’ve seen all 2011, and I wouldn’t be surprised later if it got lots of shiny, pretty awards. The link is here.

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If you missed last week’s column, I wrote a Paul Galdone appreciation of sorts, given the re-release this Spring of some of his folk tale picture books in a series Houghton Mifflin is calling “Folk Tale Classics.” Below are some spreads (each followed by their covers) from the four titles they released this Spring, Three Little Kittens (originally published in 1986), The Three Little Pigs (1970), The Little Red Hen (1973), and The Three Bears (1972). Enjoy.

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“The second little pig met a man with a bundle of sticks, and said: ‘Please, man, give me those sticks to build me a house.’ So the man did,and the little pig built his house with them.”(Click to enlarge)

“Well, the little pig got up the next morning at four o’clock, and went off for the apples. He wanted to get back home before the wolf came. But it was a long way to Merry Garden, and then he had to climb the tree. Just as he was climbing back down with his basket full of apples, he saw the wolf coming! ‘Little pig!’ the wolf said.‘You got here before me! Are the apples nice?'”(Click to enlarge)

(Click the last two images to enlarge andsee spread from which they come in its entirety)

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“The dog liked to nap all day on the sunny back porch.”(Click to enlarge)

“Soon a delicious smell filled the cozy little house. The cat got off the soft couch and strolled into the kitchen.”(Click to enlarge)

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“Once upon a time there were Three Bears who lived togetherin a house of their own in the woods.”(Click to enlarge)

“One of them was a Little Wee Bear, one was a Middle-Sized Bear,and the other was a Great Big Bear.”(Click to enlarge)

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All titles are copyright Paul Galdone and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston. All images reproduced by permission of the publisher.

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2 comments to “What I’m Doing at Kirkus This Week(Plus What I Did Last Week, Featuring Paul Galdone)”

If I were a kid reading these, the illustrations would be stupendously happy-making, because they look just like what I WANT all coloring book pictures to look like – bold and detailed, perfectly in-between the lines, and yet, out of the box. Fun stuff.